I. Field
The following description relates to wireless communications, in general, and to facilitating simultaneous traffic-idle or idle-idle demodulation in wireless communication systems, in particular.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, data, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., bandwidth and transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems, worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, etc.
Generally, a wireless multiple-access communication system can simultaneously support communication for multiple wireless terminals. Each terminal communicates with one or more base stations via transmissions on the forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from the base stations to the terminals, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from the terminals to the base stations. This communication link may be established via a single-in-single-out, multiple-in-signal-out or a multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) system.
A MIMO system employs multiple (NT) transmit antennas and multiple (NR) receive antennas for data transmission. A MIMO channel formed by the NT transmit and NR receive antennas may be decomposed into NS independent channels, which are also referred to as spatial channels, where NS≦min{NT, NR}. Each of the NS independent channels corresponds to a dimension. The MIMO system can provide improved performance (e.g., higher throughput and/or greater reliability) if the additional dimensionalities created by the multiple transmit and receive antennas are utilized.
Notwithstanding the above, a current paradigm with user equipments (UEs) in various wireless communication systems, including the CDMA 1x system, is that a radio access technology (RAT) is in only one state only at any given time. However, this approach can lead to inefficiency and, in some cases, an inability to facilitate emergency alert services to the UE.
For example, UEs may not be able to receive emergency alerts while in a traffic/active state because United States carriers may broadcast short message service (SMS) on common channels to send emergency alerts to subscribers. As such, subscribers using current UEs may not be able to receive these emergency alerts when the subscribers are on a call.
As another example, active mode Femto cell hand-ins may interrupt traffic operations on a macro network because procedures for hand-in from the macro network require a UE to demodulate Femto cell-related messages on a common channel of the Femto cell. As a result, for a UE on a call on the macro network and using the current paradigm of only one state at any given time for the protocol stack, the ongoing call of the UE may be interrupted as the UE may perform tune-aways to the Femto cell to demodulate the Femto cell messages (e.g., access point pilot information messages (APPIMs), access point identification messages (APIDMs), access point identification text messages (APIDTMs)).
As another example, Femto cell idle mode hand-ins may interrupt idle mode operations on the macro network because procedures for hand-in from the macro network require a UE to demodulate Femto cell-related messages on a common channel of the Femto cell. As a result, for a UE operating in idle mode on the macro network and using the current paradigm of only one state at any given time for the protocol stack, the idle state of the UE may be interrupted as the UE may perform tune-aways to the Femto cell to demodulate the Femto cell messages.
As such, systems, apparatus and methods to facilitate simultaneous or concurrent traffic-idle or idle-idle demodulation for active mode hand-in, or idle mode hand-in, without interruption of traffic/active operations, or idle mode operations, respectively, on the macro network, are therefore desired.